Monthly Archives June 2015

Have you ever played a video game and wished you could jump inside the screen? Like actually be the avatar you’re feverishly controlling from the other side. I’ll admit, there were times I wished I was Princess Peach. Partly because Super Mario 64 was awesome and partly because I always wanted to be rescued from a castle by a knight in shining armor (I’m still waiting for that to happen)

Drone racers apparently feel the same way (well, maybe not the castle part). Welcome first person view (FPV) racing.

FPV racing is every drone racers dream come to life. It’s basically a game of virtual reality, or feeling like a superhero for five minutes.

It’s the hot new thing in competitive drone flying, and over the past year or so, more and more pilots have started building their own racers ...

On today’s edition of destroying things with machine guns, we find ourselves in Arizona during the semi-annual Big Sandy Shoot, which is the largest machine-gun shoot in the US. We also find ourselves learning a valuable lesson: It’s really hard to shoot down drones.

First, let’s talk about the Big Sandy Shoot, because it sounds both amazing and terrifying at the same time. It’s a facility just outside the town of Wikieup in northwest Arizona with a .25 mile long firing line and 1200 yard maximum distance. They’ve got 1000 reactive targets, night shoots with pyrotechnics, and a ton of NFA weapons. These people are serious about their shoots with an average of over 3.5 million rounds fired per shoot...

There are a lot of regulations about how and when you can fly drones, but there is also a bit of grey area when it comes to enforcing them. As an added bonus, there is apparently a total lack of ethics (or common sense) from some owners on the appropriate time to fly your toy.

A video was recently released that shows John Thompson flying his drone over a house fire in upstate New York. The firefighters look to be working on putting out any fires and checking the structure when the drone appears on the scene. So, like any self-respecting firefighter who is trying to save someone’s house and shouldn’t have to worry about a mystery drone in the sky, they tag it with the hose. Twice...

The unmanned aircraft industry is growing so quickly in North Dakota that two Fargo companies almost signed their recent merger deal on a napkin, an executive said Wednesday.

Aerobotic Innovations, a software company, and Packet Digital, a hardware engineer, formed Botlink after executives from the companies met at a chamber of commerce dinner about a month ago. Shawn Muehler, 29, CEO of Aerobotic Innovations, said the companies were “very close” to signing a contract before dessert was served.

“Within a week, really, we got everything done,” Muehler said Wednesday at a drone conference held inside a hangar at the Fargo Jet Center.

The new company is building a platform meant to help drones stay up in the air longer while collecting and distributing real-time data through cellu...